University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

The Information Practices of Parents of Transgender and Non-Binary Youth: An Exploratory Study

Ortiz-Myers, Maria; Costello, Kaitlin L.

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/113656

Description

Title
The Information Practices of Parents of Transgender and Non-Binary Youth: An Exploratory Study
Author(s)
  • Ortiz-Myers, Maria
  • Costello, Kaitlin L.
Issue Date
2021
Keyword(s)
  • Information Practices
  • LIS
  • Non-binary children
Abstract
In this article, we report the results of an exploratory pilot study intended to capture the experiences of parents of transgender (trans) or non-binary youth. Library and information science researchers have spent little time exploring the phenomenon of family information practices. This context provides an opportunity to further theorize how social dynamics impact information practices. Seven parents of six trans or non-binary young people under twenty-five years old participated in semistructured interviews. Questions probed parents’ information work around gender identity, their emotions, and parent-child information exchanges. Results indicate that parents’ information needs are shaped by emotion and awareness of transphobia and the abuse often directed at trans and non-binary youth. A commitment to be supportive motivates parents’ attributions of authority. Parents rely on various information sources but prize the experiential knowledge of other trans people and their supporters particularly. These encounters elicit parents’ work toward a new understanding of gender broadly and their child’s gender specifically. Parents take on information proxy and mediary roles and collaborate with their trans or non-binary children to gather and manage information. Parents’ interactions with information in this context reflect sociocultural attitudes and ideas of power and authority, serve cognitive and affective needs, are situated in time and place, and are dependent on enacted, embodied realities.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press and the Illinois School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Series/Report Name or Number
Library Trends 70 (2). Fall 2021
ISSN
0024-2594
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/113656
DOI
10.1353/lib.2021.0018
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2021 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Owning Collections

Library Trends 70 (2) Fall 2021: Family Matters: Mapping Information Phenomena within the Context of the Family PRIMARY
Library Trends 70 (2) Fall 2021: Family Matters: Mapping Information Phenomena within the Context of the Family. Edited by Nicole K. Dalmer and Sarah Barriage.